Cloud Imperium Games says claim of $45,000 refund was 'fabricated'

A reddit poster claims to have obtained a $45,000 refund, but CIG says that is not the case.

Star Citizen, in addition to collecting record amounts of crowdfunding, has garnered no small share of criticism and skepticism. With myriad delays and missed deadlines, some backers who bought in early have been looking for a way out and requesting refunds. In fact, there's a subreddit devoted to the topic.

This recent post in r/starcitizen_refunds claimed that a member of a Star Citizen guild was able to acquire a $45,000 refund for three 'Completionist' backer packages that CIG sells for $15,000 each. However, a representative of CIG has denied this story in an email to PC Gamer, calling it "totally fabricated" and "wrong on so many levels."

The Reddit post contains a number of screenshots of correspondence between the poster and CIG's customer service department detailing the refund process, however: "The screenshots do not represent the actual communications which were shared to and from our support department," the CIG representative wrote. "So no…there’s nothing to it at all. There is no story."

After some follow-up questions, the representative informed me that a refund was issued recently to one customer, but in the amount of $330. I asked if it appeared this was the same customer, and if this customer had perhaps doctored the correspondence to make it appear as if the amount refunded was $45,000.

The response I got was: "Yes to the first. Yes to the second…as best as we can tell."

I've attempted to contact the Reddit poster (who said in their post that they preferred to remain anonymous) about this refund, and will update the story if I hear anything back.

Update: The redditor who made the original post has deleted their account.